


Vow

by Lackless



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Arranged Marriage - kinda, Body Sharing, Canon with a twist, Isle of Man, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 19:27:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16204115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lackless/pseuds/Lackless
Summary: Dan and Phil get married





	Vow

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you endlessly to [Ablissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ablissa/pseuds/Ablissa/works), [huphilpuffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs/works) and the word wars group for their cheerleading

It was time. 

Their busy lives had led them to this point. The year had passed in a whirl of the world, touring and greeting all their many thousand fan family who turned out in droves to hear them roast, rant and rap. A celebration of their lives in 2018, because what, truly, was that all about? 

Arrangements had been fully made in their absence, while they were on the road. Here, Kath had excelled, busying herself with the thousand small details that the ceremony required, ably assisted by stalwart Anna, their PA, who kept the clocks ticking and the gears turning.

As it turned out, the date was the one detail that had needed no argument, it was the 19th this or next year, and Phil’s grandad may not have another year, so 19th this year it was, regardless of their punishing work schedule. 

Phil stands on the edge of the cliff, his family and friends watching, and waits. 

*

“We’ll just have to edit the whole thing in the two weeks after we get back from Mumbai,” he’d said simply. Like it was the easiest thing in the world. “Otherwise they’re not going to get it out on time.”

“Phil. You know what I’m gonna be like when we get back. I’m going to crash. We’ve done this before.” Dan lay across his chest, skin on skin in the cool bite of the aircon hotel room. “We need to have a pyjama week.”

“Pyjama week would be a mistake, we learnt that last time.” Phil can be brutal in his honesty when he has to be. “You need structure and purpose. You need to be kept  busy. It will be good for you to have something to keep your mind off it, or you’ll spiral. I know we’re tight on time, but we need to finish editing the movie before, so we can be there and give notice a week ahead.”

“Kath told me we could have given notice to the wizard at any time in the last year.” Dan grouses, skin sticking sweatily, despite the aircon.

“Dan! You have to stop calling him ‘the Wizard’ before the ceremony,” Phil says with a smile in his voice, “Tim is a family friend, and he’s doing us a favour.” 

“October 19th…” Dan drifts.

“It’s a Friday. Mum said Friday is a terrible day to get married, ‘Thursday for losses and Friday for crosses’” Phil recites. 

“You’ve told me this. Second only to the number of times you’ve told me that October is a lucky month for weddings.” Phil gives him a half-smirk. 

“October is a lucky month always,” he says, bringing Dan’s face around for a kiss. They stretch into it, Dan’s body arching against his.  

Dan pulls back, rosy patches flushed. 

“And then…” he trails off hopefully.

“Then we’ll be complete. Then you’ll never be alone again.” Phil bumps foreheads with his beloved boy. 

“I can’t wait.” He says with quiet hopefulness. They both wish fervently that it takes, and that this is what will finally help. 

*

Dan is one picky motherfucker. 

Phil knows this. He has his own moments of pickiness, of course, and mainly over the cake, but he is nothing compared to Dan. His fiancé has spent hours debating with Kath on facetime from the bus, from the hotel, always hosing their data allowance on detail detail detail. As if she would have put a foot wrong. Phil just wants them to be bound together. Dan is all about the  _ statement _ , the  _ permanence _ . So he’s treating his future mother-in-law, who loves him almost more than her own two sons, as his own personal wedding planner. She’s in her element.

‘ _ Daniel, I don’t want any more of your lip.’ _ She scolds, playfully. 

_ ‘We’re only going to do it once’  _  he says. ‘ _ It’s got to be right. _ ’ And who is Phil to argue with that?  

*

The Knight had come into his life at the crossroads. 

An energetic warrior, quick to love and hate. Phil had stood somewhere between man and boy, trying to decide on a future he couldn’t see, trying to escape the shadow of a friend’s death, and Daniel Howell had appeared, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. 

He’s always been able to hear his thoughts, ever since the 19th. Not as fully formed sentences, but as snatches of consciousness, or flashes of emotion. Sharp twinges of distress, or surges of arousal. He can do it with anyone he’s close to; He and his mother don’t have to have a verbal conversation when they’re following the same TV show, even at distance. Martyn is used to Phil answering questions before he’s asked them. He’s learnt to erect walls where he needs to. 

It’s the legacy of his grandmother, his mum’s mum. A matronly woman, always wreathed in foul-smelling smoke, with formal skirts and a shampoo-and-set. As he’d grown up amongst the sleepy, sheepy hills she had looked him up and down and told him about the dreams she’d had. Of a lion who lay down next to a bear. Of him standing inside a solar eclipse that circles the whole planet. Of him as a man, turning and moving in perfect sync with a mirror version of himself, one dressed in red the other in white, a golden thread connecting them forehead to forehead. 

He doesn’t get the dreams, but he got another manifestation of the family powers. 

For his mum, her power lay in navigation. Whenever she makes a decision it turns out to be the right choice. Buy a new-build in Rawtenstall. Move an ante-natal check up to a snowy Friday in January. Buy that particular packet of cereal and win a webcam.

Phil can send his mind places. He influences. He can pull and push. When Dan’s in the howling abyss, it’s Phil that lights the way out. When Dan’s horny, it bleeds over, until the resulting feedback loop means that neither of them know which way is up or down, until they can resolve the situation. 

It makes meet and greets draining for him, keeping his walls tight against the battering of hormonal hysteria that he and Dan generate. He’s grateful to every single one of them, his subscribers make him who he is today, their connections to him forged through his videos and liveshows. And he’s so willing, he loves meeting them, he feels like he owes them his time. But it’s painful to keep himself inside the way he has to around so many people who want a piece of him. Dan is aware, and checks in often, pulling Phil’s attention to him without saying a word.  

Dan’s known about Phil since the wheel. Since his bravado led him to carpe fucking diem and snog his internet idol right there in the sky above Manchester. 

On the 19th, he touched himself in the same physical space as Phil for the very first time, lying on that famous AmazingPhil bed. The resultant surge of teenage emotions, over a bond forged through countless hours of MSN messenger, Skype and phone calls – that one hot flash was enough to send Phil hurtling over the edge completely untouched. 

*

“Oh my god! Fucking hell!” Dan pants, red faced and adorable and so fucking young. He’s got the tightest jeans pushed down around his thighs and come on his chest and chin. His eyes are huge and dark as he reaches for Phil, only to realise that there is a massive wet patch, bigger than pre-come can account for, in his pants. 

Phil can’t even speak. Everything in the whole world lies before him. This boy, this absolutely beautiful fae has feelings for him that are so strong they’ve torn through the walls he set for himself. His crossroad path is clear to him now; wherever Dan goes, he will go. It’s been barely twelve hours and he already knows this is forever. 

*

Dan makes his entrance. 

Dan has had long practise at making an entrance. 

The sun is at its apex, rather early for them and early this sort of ceremony (the fae prefer dusk) but they’re nothing if not sentimental. They’ve planned the joining to take place at exactly 12:40, at nine years to the minute since a CrossCountry train closed the distance between them. Like they had always been waiting to find each other and fate could not help but put them together. 

Phil, standing at the cliff edge shields his eyes from the sun with his hand. The sea is endlessly blue, reflecting the clear sky. For October they have been phenomenally lucky with the weather. He feels Dan before he sees him, and gives a nod to Martyn, who in addition to claiming the best man spot, would not let anyone else handle the music for today. Cornelia is the first to her feet and the rest of the guests follow suit. Even Phil’s elderly grandfather, his only surviving grandparent, frail as he is, stands steady in the midday sunlight. Phil idly wonders what Dorothy would have thought if she could have be here, and feels the faintest of tugs from the ether. She is.

Strings lift on the breeze and Phil’s heart lifts with them. As the drums come in he sees a figure dressed in white on the horizon walking like an arrow towards him and his heart jumps to his throat. 

Dan is resplendent in the sharpest white suit he has ever seen. He wears a crown of deep purple chrysanthemums on his brow and a epically long cape billows behind him. He looks for all the world like an emperor, striding across the clifftop, every step bringing him closer and closer to his longed for benediction. He is as utterly, breathtakingly beautiful this day, as he was nine years ago, when he stepped off the train in onto a crowded platform, all skinny, delicate, six foot two inches of him. 

Tim, the Wizard, stands before the faery rock as Dan gets closer. Phil notices him pick the sleeve of his purple robe, he clearly doesn’t wear it very often. The grass is lush beneath his feet. Everyone cranes to look back at Dan as he stands at the back of the crowd. Unaccompanied, a defiant tilt to his proud chin. 

The aisle between Howells and Lesters is lined with bunches of creamy dahlia, burgundy ranunculus, blue thistle and dotted with Manx cushag, spots of yellow in a colourful palette. Phil’s glad he fought Dan to have these riotous colours, their wedding is not the place for a monochrome aesthetic, despite Dan’s theatrics. 

Dan looks neither left nor right as he approaches, he is focussed on Phil and Phil alone. He’d rejected all suggestion of an escort, citing diplomacy, and now he’s walking with singular intent. 

“Hi!” says Phil as he draws alongside him.

“Hi,” says Dan quietly, flicking his eyes sideways at Phil. Dan may be the dramatic figure of this wedding party, but Phil has scrubbed up pretty well his own self. His newfound model-confidence and a suit that fits to his skin like he was born into it. A dark blue scattered floral shirt, with a crisp royal blue suit on top that makes his eyes appear supernaturally bright. 

“Nice cloak,” whispers Phil with a smirk. Dan’s outfit is the one area he has been allowed no input whatsoever. 

“It’s a  _ cape _ you dingus!” Dan whispers in mock outrage. 

“I love you.” Phil whispers. Tim is clearly ready to begin.

“Love you too. Let’s do this, mate.” Dan grins wide as Phil has ever seen. 

*

Later, lights are low. They bask in the glow of a hundred candles, scented and otherwise, throwing their amber light around the marquee. Strung with fairy lights and yet more flowers, it is filled with all the people they love in the world (and, it would seem, a few still loved who have left this world for another.) Phil sees friends old and new; Marianne and Fleur knocking back drinks, Bryony and Wirrow chatting amicably, despite everything, Tim the Wizard dad dancing, Anja, Ian, Lauren and Emily. 

Dan and Phil hold each other and sway, not quite dancing, and cocooned in a newlywed bubble not a million miles away from their usual bubble, but with one important difference. 

“It’s incredible,” says Dan softly, “you’re here. You’re right here!” He taps the side of his head. Phil smiles and kisses him where he’s tapped on the temple, and feels the shiver that goes through Dan reflected in his own mind. 

‘ _ I’ll always be there, as long as you still want me. _ ’ Phil sends, delighting in the clarity of their now two-way link. 

‘ _ Forever please. _ ’ Dan sends back. 

*

The ceremony had passed in a flash, Phil spoke the words and the bond took almost instantaneously. They had been warned it didn’t always, but Phil hadn’t been worried in the slightest. Tim had thrown the cushag into the sea, drawn the golden thread between their minds, and there was Dan, unfolding like petals inside his head. Phil is gentle as he walks through the open door. He can see light and shadow here, and there’s time for that later. Right now, sunlight glitters off the tears on Dan’s cheeks and they wrap each other in their first kiss as husbands. 

*

Later, deep into the Manx night, their guests have gone and they are deep in astral exploration. The October night is cold and crisp but they are warmed by each other. The sky here is dark, and the stars truly visible in the unpolluted sky. Dan and Phil lie tangled in the dark, spread out on Dan’s cape and taking in the vastness of space. 

For the first time Dan can look out into the infinite abyss and feel no fear; no fear of the dark, no fear of himself, no fear of existing. Phil is a golden kernel of awareness in a pocket of his mind that he will carry forever, and that shines light throughout his entire being. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Dan’s outfit](https://twitter.com/CAMSQUIAT/status/1046965953408487435)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Suggested Listening: "Saturn (Instrumental)" by Sleeping at Last (ty [outphan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outphan/pseuds/outphan/works))
> 
> * * *  
> O THE cushag flower in a fairy bower  
> Would shine like a star of gold;  
> But when it grows in the farmer’s close  
> ‘Tis a shocking weed, we’re told.  
> Yet common things  
> May have their wings  
> To help our souls above;  
> And wayside weeds,  
> Like kindly deeds,  
> Spring from a father’s love.
> 
> The cushag flower had fairy power  
> In olden times, you know,  
> To bear you away on a summer’s day  
> Wherever you wished to go.  
> Its golden wings  
> Were slender things  
> To carry souls aloft;  
> But fairy tales,  
> Like fresh’ning gales,  
> May have their uses oft.
> 
> The cushag flower in a stormy hour  
> Shines brighter for the gloom;  
> So kindly deeds, like wayside weeds,  
> May shine when troubles loom.  
> Old folks would say,  
> In their own day,  
> When troubles took their fill,  
> And times were bad,  
> And hearts were sad,  
> “There’s gool on the cushag still!”
> 
> Now the cushag we know must never grow  
> Where the farmer’s work is done;  
> But along the rills in the heart of the hills  
> The cushag may shine like the sun,  
> Where the golden flowers  
> Have fairy powers  
> To gladden our hearts with their grace;  
> And in Vannin Veg Veen,  
> In the valleys green,  
> The cushags have still a place.  
> \- Josephine Kermode, 1907


End file.
